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Notes -
Lets talk about the Senate Democratic Primaries.
Maine
Graham Platener, aka nazi tattoo guy, aka "disabled" veteran oyster man, is the presumptive Democratic nominee in Maine after 78-year-old former governer Janet Mills dropped out. Platner will be running against the incumbant moderate Republican Susan Collins in the general.
Susan Collins has won five straight terms in Maine, but she is the underdog in the upcoming election due to the expected blue wave.
The Maine election is interesting because the conventional wisdom is that Democrats need to run an unusually moderate candidate to win, and Platner shows that we don't have a good conception of what "moderate" even means. On policy positions Platner is leftist, but culturally he has the effect of a rural white tough-guy (as one might have expected from the Nazi tattoo). Expect the results of this one to be poured-over for years in candidate selection debates.
Michigan
The Michigan Democratic primary is complicated by having three candidates instead of two. Haley Stevens, Mallory McMorrow, and Abdul El-Sayed all have viable campaigns. Looking in from the outside, the big issue in the race is Israel.
Haley Stevens is "establishment" in the machine sense. She is openly pro-Israel. Not much grassroots support. I expect her to lose barring shenanigans.
Mallory McMorrow is the traditional liberal PMC candidate. Very white woman coded. Backed by literal Anthropic employees. Her public position is skeptical of certain aspects of the US-Israel relationship, but it is clear that she doesn't have deep convictions on the issue.
Abdul El-Sayed is the leftist anti-Israel candidate. As his name suggests, he is an Arab Muslim. He is best known at this point for campaigning with leftist streamer Hasan Piker.
The attempts to cancel El-Sayed for his Israel position and Hasan connections seem to have backfired, as he has catapulted into the lead on Polymarket. What I think is happening here is that Israel is by default a low-salience issue, but if Israel is made into an issue by e.g. a US-involved war in the Middle East or constant media coverage of campaign tactics, then the anti-Israel faction of the Democratic party will simply win because they have an overwhelming numerical advantage among the Democrat base.
Does Abdul El Sayed have non-Israel related opinions? What are they? Is this a likely case of nominating a near-squad member in a technically swing state?
The first policy position you see on his website is "Medicare for All". I'm not sure if that plus Palestine makes him part of the Squad
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This guy’s publicist deserves a raise. I went on his Wikipedia page just now to remind myself of some particulars and found it to be extremely, extremely sympathetic without ever actually appearing biased.
The detail I was looking for was his time at George Washington University. There’s a whole class of guys who congregate at a few institutions like GW so they can groom themselves for politics. (Pete Buttigieg and Vivek Ramiswamy are similar types although not GW kids.)
I’m not sure if this actually translates to mass appeal or not. Democrats have convinced themselves it does, and they’re all excited about that, but I’m not sure that that means it’s a real phenomenon. And if they’re excited enough to vote for him he could win with that. The blue collar facade is like a spell you cast to sprinkle victory on your cereal. One reason I think it doesn’t matter is that the nazi tattoos don’t seem to matter, because nobody is really looking at this guy as a flesh-and-blood human being. He’s an idea of a person, and has successfully convinced Democrats that the idea he is projecting will win and therefore allow them to acquire more power. So isn’t the rest all just rationalizing?
Seems like Collins would win to me, because apparently she always outperforms her polls, although maybe she is uniquely vulnerable this year or maybe Plattner really is uniquely strong.
If she does lose, I think it would have more to do with an argument I’ve seen advanced by people like Mike Cernovich. What good has Susan Collins done for Maine? It’s overrun with Somalis and welfare fraud now right? Easy enough to imagine a loss in that environment, especially if the only rejoinder is “nazi tattoos”. Turns out no one cares. (?)
Is it? Wiki seems to think they were maybe 0.7% in 2013, then down to under half a percent in 2022. Was there a more recent surge?
This is where the scare quotes around "disabled" might be significant. Are any of Platner's benefits for anything other than mental health issues? Either the guy's 100% disability rating for those is legit, in which case it's reasonable to fear he may not be able to vigorously hunt down welfare fraud, or it's not, in which case it's reasonable to fear he may not be inclined to vigorously hunt down welfare fraud (whether because the odds of the optics backfiring are good, or just because game recognizes game).
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Is this intended as a Nietzschean "will-to-power" joke?
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Where does El-Sayed fall on other core Democrat principles such as trans rights?
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This reads like some political comedy piece.
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